One of my radio magazines mentioned that the radio band used for nav systems below 10,000 feet has the potential to sustain interference from certain permitted (class C?) electronics like cell phones, blackberries, scanners, and CD players. Nobody has ever determined that a single plane has ever been affected, but nobody wants to take liability for saying it would never happen.

The principle is that all electronic gear, including TVs, microwaves, cell phones, electric shavers, etc throw off an electromagnetic field. In some cases, the fields register as static or errant signals to some receivers, such as the nav systems on planes.

The super expensive onboard phone system uses a tailored signal in the 400 band which doesn't affect the nav systems.

Hey, Asshole, you turn off that cell phone, or I'm suing you for exposing my DNA to deadly EMFs.

I couldn't find the original report but it appears that they were looking at damage caused by heating to cells in a petri dish. But a petri dish has no circulation and no temperature regulation mechanism so you'd expect more heating than you would in the body. It's also not clear how long the exposures were.

I recently read where Samuel L. Jackson got his foot caught in the closing door and was dragged to within feet of the end of the platform before he was saved by someone pulling the emergency stop cord in the car.

Really? I'd have thought that would be impossible because the train won't run with the doors open.

Generally true. But, the doors don't always register properly on the control panel.

In newer NYC subway cars, there's a circuit which closes when each door closes. When all the doors have closed, two lights in the conductor's booth go from red to green, which allows the motorperson to move the train. The left light shows doors in all cars to the left of the conductor, the right light shows doors in the other direction.

But, if the condutor "keys out" or disables a door, it won't register on the panel. It's not supposed to open and shut, but some will, anyway. On late night trains, the conductor will key out several cars to concentrate passengers in a few center cars.

If the train is moving on a line which has center and side platforms, the conductor has to move, with her key, from one side of the train to the other to open the correct door mix.

“Jazz musicians just get better and better as the years go by. I think chefs are the same way. You know who you are.”

Really? I'd have thought that would be impossible because the train won't run with the doors open.

The doors came together on his ankle, and apparently closed at the top and it was sufficient to register them as "closed".

I am all too familiar with the fact that the train won't run when the doors are open, having been stranded out by DiFara's for half an hour when some hoodlums thought it was funny to stand in the doorways of several cars on our train.

Some Guy on a packed rush hour train laying his entire back against the pole -- and hence laying aginst lots of hands trying to hold on to the pole. So oblivious. Really, really makes my blood boil.

I got interviewed on this very subject by Randy Kennedy, who used to write a subway journal in the Times. My technique is to curl my hand ever so slightly so that my knuckles are digging into the person's back. If they can live with that, so can I. I find the overhead bars too uncomfortable for someone as short as I to hang on to.

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." --John Steinbeck